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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Birdcage button Ornament (DIY)

It is now officially the Christmas season! What does this mean?

Well, the responsible people are out and about finishing up their holiday shopping and the crafty people (such as myself) are at home with their glue guns making holiday decorations out of whatever trinkets and junk they can get their glitter covered hands on. I like to call this procraftinating: procrastination + crafting.

Today, I made this gorgeous little Birdcage ornament, which I adore and can't wait to tie into the ribbons of a perfectly wrapped gift...that I haven't wrapped...or purchased yet. But I still have almost a month to buy my gifts and so do you, so why not make your own birdcage ornament? Totally Tutorials and Incomparable Buttons fed my procraftination by sending this set of ridiculously cute little bird buttons. I love everything about them: the style, the colors, even the cute square of corrugated cardboard they arrived sewn to. I hated to snip them apart.

You will need:

bird shaped buttons

ribbon

X-Acto knife

acorn top

8 toothpicks

wooden bead

superglue

wine cork

hot glue gun

not shown: wire clippers

To build your cage, use the X-Acto Knife to slice the cork into disks. Be careful - if you injure yourself, you won't be able to make things and instead you'll have to do responsible stuff. We don't want that. My disks are about .25" thick. This disk is the bottom portion of your cage.

Using a dab of hot glue, attach one of the bird buttons to the center of your disk.

Its already adorable, isn't it?

Now we'll add the bars. First: use the wire clippers to snip four toothpicks in half.

You will now have eight sections, or 'bars' for your cage. I chose to attach the bars with superglue instead of hot glue because it looks nicer and seems to hold better. Dip the pointy end of your toothpick half in super glue and push gently into the cork.

Getting your eight birdcage bars evenly spaced apart can be tricky.

Think of your disk as a clock.

Imagine where the 12, 3, 6, and 9 would be on your cork clock and push the first four bars into those areas.

When all of the bars are glued in place, your cage should look like this.

All of your cage bars might not be at the same height. Its okay if they aren't perfect. But if it bothers you, just trim the ends of taller bars with your wire clippers.

The top portion of this birdcage is an acorn top (remember when I collected all my fall craft supplies?). Hold the cap upside down and make a ring of hot glue inside. Pick up your cage, flip it over, and press the exposed ends of the bars into the hot glue.

Once the glue has cooled, glue a bead to the top of your birdcage and slide a loop of ribbon through.

I love Button Mad buttons and agree about cutting them off of the corrugated paper that they come in. What a wonderful idea you have created, and a really good tutorial, I think my son would love making these.